The Visitor(30)

The spell broken by Papa’s imagined warning, I uncurled my fingers, but the tingle in my mouth grew stronger, as if my every distressed thought had been read and another calming message sent. A presence was trying to communicate with me, but I had no idea if the entity was ghost, human or in-between. I was too afraid at that moment to allow it into my head.

Papa’s phantom caution flitted away as my fist closed once more around the key. I somehow knew it was important, another clue. What did it matter if I took it? The rules had long since been broken. A door to the dead world had already been opened.

Call it instinct, call it desperation or even defiance, but I knew I couldn’t fight destiny with only half-truths. I felt strongly that my greatest weapon still lay hidden in the secrets that had been kept from me since the terrifying night of my birth.

There was only one person who could help me uncover the past. Despite my fears and reservations, I had to go see Papa, and soon.

And with that resolve, the taste in my mouth faded. Sunlight once again spangled down through the open doorway. Everything returned to normal, and if I hadn’t seen what I’d seen in my life, if I didn’t know what I knew, I might have convinced myself the past few moments had been nothing more than a hallucination or a waking dream.

But I did know.





Eighteen

I put the key and the stereoscope in a desk drawer and for the rest of the afternoon tried very hard to concentrate on work. Twilight slid in on a mild breeze, but as darkness descended, the wind picked up and the chime outside my office played an unnerving serenade. I sat with my back to the windows and didn’t turn even when a tree limb scratched against the glass. I didn’t want to know what waited in the deep shadows of my garden.

Around nine, I took a couple of pills for my headache and stretched out on the chaise, not yet ready for bed. I still had hopes that Devlin would call and kept the phone handy just in case.

I only meant to doze for a few minutes, but when I roused sometime later, the garden breeze had died away to an unnatural stillness. I tried to concentrate on the hum of the ceiling fan in my office and the pop of settling floorboards overhead as Macon moved about his apartment. The normal household sounds were reassuring and made me feel less alone. Pulling a soft throw over my legs, I closed my eyes and sank more deeply into slumber.

When the dreams came, they transported me back to a time in my childhood when I had not yet been aware of the ghosts. I was in Rosehill Cemetery with Papa. It was just getting on dusk and moths flitted through the air like dark-winged fairies. I sat in the grass and watched Mama’s yellow tabby pounce once, twice and then disappear into the shelter of a rose thicket with something dangling from his sharp teeth.

The approach of twilight had always spooked me. Even with Papa nearby I felt the stir of an unknown fear. The day had been clear and warm, but now a chilly breeze swept through my hair, lifting the blond strands as though invisible hands were at play there. Papa didn’t seem to notice the sudden nip. His head was bowed to his work and he didn’t glance up even when the leaves overhead began to whisper.

Trying to ignore the tingles across my scalp, I removed a ribbon from around my neck so that I could admire the old key I’d found earlier on a headstone in the deepest recesses of Rosehill Cemetery. Shrouded in ivy and Spanish moss, that forgotten corner had become my hideaway. No visitors ever came along that way and even Papa rarely went back there. But I’d spent many an hour in the company of the forsaken, reading aloud from my Gothic romances and weaving daisy chains to adorn the crumbling headstones.

I was never to take anything from the graves. Papa had instilled that rule in me long ago, but I felt certain that key had been placed on the headstone for me to find. My aunt Lynrose was visiting from Charleston and she always brought little gifts—a book, a charm, a shiny silver dollar—which she slipped beneath my pillow or hid away in my favorite climbing tree.

Suspended from a pink satin ribbon, the key was ornate and beautiful, the kind that might open an ancient treasure box stuffed with toys and trinkets and deep, dark secrets. Draping a clover necklace over the headstone, I slipped the ribbon around my neck as a frisson of excitement coursed through me.

The key felt heavy and warm to the touch. Tucking it inside my sweater, I skipped off to find Papa.

Now as I waited for him to finish his work, I grew more and more fascinated as I spun the ribbon around one finger, watching the brass catch the fading light. Faster and faster I twirled the ribbon until the knot worked loose and the key went flying.

“Oh!” I fell to my knees to search through the thick grass.

“What’s wrong?” Papa called out to me.

“I lost my necklace. The one Aunt Lynrose left for me. I’ve looked and looked, but I can’t find it anywhere.”

Papa abandoned his work and came over to kneel beside me on the ground. “Whereabouts did you drop it?”

I showed him the spot and he began to methodically comb through the grass with his gnarled fingers. We kept at it for a long time until I finally grew weary of the search.

“I’m tired, Papa. Can we come back tomorrow and look for it?”

“No!”

His sharp tone startled me. I glanced up at him in confusion. “Why not?”

His tired gaze met mine in the falling twilight. “You mustn’t leave here until you find what you lost.”

“But why, Papa?”